The Ningbo Distinguished Gentlemen’s Club | 宁波尊贵绅士俱乐部成立

Gentlemen of Ningbo rejoice, for the city now has a group for men. Formed by the husbands of the members of the Ningbo Foreign Ladies Group, the Ningbo Distinguished Gentlemen’s Club (NDGC) held its first official dinner at Florentina Italian Restaurant this past month, bringing in over 30 people to take part in a lavish set menu and fun.

To find out what the NDGC is and what they have in store for the foreign men of Ningbo, we met with founders Robert Casey, Pieter Mols and Tobias Geertsma outside of Florentina in the fading sunlight before the dinner took place. “We realized that ladies have it really good in Ningbo,” laughs Robert as he describes how the group came to be. The men and their wives lived together in the same compound near Laowaitan, and after a week during which the women had gone out nearly each day for ladies-only events, the guys were left wondering why there weren’t any groups or events that were more geared towards men.

So, when Tobias and Robert were together one day, they decided to start a de facto WeChat group for them and their guy friends in the city. The WeChat group quickly became an informal means for the men and their growing number of compatriots to meet up at a specified location for a few drinks, dinner, or both. “It was pretty staggered at first, usually someone saying‘hey I had a shit day at work, who wants to go grab a few beers?’”

“The most people we ever had at these meet ups were around 6-8 people,” Tobias piped in. “When we decided to make it more formal, we started adding more people to the group chat, maybe 8 new people this week.” The dinner that evening, which the ladies helped organize, was the group’s first official event, with more planned for the coming month and potentially the summer.

Having seen how involved the ladies were with the NFLG and “all the menus and the fun and the food,” they laugh, the group decided that they wanted to do something similar. The dinner at Florentina was that event, with another joint event – not only open to NFLG members but open to members of the Chinese community as well – taking place on the 26th of the month at Elephant Spanish Restaurant in Heyi Avenue and a following event at Slim’s at the beginning of June.

Even the origins of the name were steeped in humor. “For a time we couldn’t decide on a name,” explains Tobias, “it became another lost group chat but we eventually settled on NDGC.” The N stood for Ningbo, and GC “Gentlemen’s Club”, while the D “stands for ‘Distinguished,’ but the ladies changed it to read ‘Desperate’” Tobias laughs.

Shenanigans aside, the group has much planned for the year to come, including more dinners, restaurant and bar meet ups, and possibly even the Great Wall Marathon in Beijing. “For sure the more we can pull together, the better,” says Robert. “It’s quite casual, more flexible,” adds Tobias, “more spur of the moment” which will hopefully lead to more unique events in the months and years to come. We left the NDGC when new members began to arrive for dinner, gathered to take part in an evening of merriment and brotherhood. “Even though we’d meet randomly and it was all joking,” Tobias told us “I had guys come up to me and tell me ‘Tobias, thank you so much for this, I’ve been in Ningbo for 2 years and didn’t know anyone until this point.’” Groups like the NDGC are founded as a means to make new connections, and based on their story, drive and events like the dinner and those to come, they’ll be able to help forge connections for years to come.